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Daisy M. Jenkins, the first director of global diversity and first woman of color to hold a vice president position for Raytheon Co., does not fear a challenge.

When her high school counselor suggested that she skip college and get a job as a nurses aide or secretary, Jenkins went for the degree.

When her sister introduced her to Fred Jenkins, Daisy Jenkins — still in high school at the time — declared she would marry the man someday.

When Hughes Aircraft Co. hired her in 1981 as a low-level clerk, Jenkins said she would reach middle management in five years.

And she did.

In her first book, “Within the Walls: A Journey Through Sexism and Racism in Corporate America,� Jenkins, 67, uses fiction to let readers vicariously experience workplace nuances and prejudices she witnessed during her 30-plus years in human resources.

In 2010, Jenkins retired from Raytheon Co. after 28 years. She began her corporate career when it was still Hughes Aircraft Co. and eventually became the company’s first director of global diversity. She retired as the vice president of human resources for ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥-based Raytheon Missile Systems.

“She is so intelligent and so high energy,� says Louise Francesconi, the former president of Raytheon Missile Systems. “She is so engaged in all aspects of the job. She doesn’t define how she contributes by job description, but contributes with her person, experience and intellect.�

Jenkins went on to work as the executive vice president and chief human resources and administrative officer for Carondelet Health Network for more than three years. She launched her own executive consulting business, Daisy Jenkins & Associates LLC, almost two years ago.

“I think it was divine intervention that I started at the bottom,� Jenkins says. “As I made my ascent to the executive level, I was always mindful of the people who were clerks, the people who were secretaries, the people who emptied the trash in the office, to know them by name.�

FROM THE GROUND UP

Growing up in Bainbridge, Georgia, Jenkins remembers walking home from school and having to move from sidewalk to street for white passersby. Secondhand textbooks from the white schools often had “racist obscenities� scribbled inside of them, she says.

Jenkins remembers her parents — a maid and a janitor — as intelligent and diligent workers who valued education for their children.

“We may have been treated like second-class citizens, but we were told not to act like second-class citizens,� Jenkins says. “I think if you behave like you belong long enough, people begin to believe, ‘Oh, I guess she belongs.’�

“YOU NEED A LITTLE MORE�

As a young bride, Daisy Jenkins struggled to find a job when her husband, Fred, was stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.

During an interview with a store downtown, “The department store told her she was the cutest little colored girl, and her hair was so nice,� Fred, her husband of 48 years, remembers. They told her, “You would make the perfect elevator girl.�

Daisy told the store “where to shove the elevator� and walked out. Later, she called to apologize and was hired as the store’s first African-American salesperson, she says.

She returned to school when Fred was stationed in Hawaii, earning an associate degree and then bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Later, she would receive a juris doctor from the University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s James E. Rogers College of Law.

“I felt that I would not get a job, and they would say, ‘Well if you only had your master’s. If you only had a little bit more of this,’� Daisy says. “You know, it’s funny. Once you become a lawyer, they stop telling you that you need a little more of this and a little bit more of that.�

Networking, navigating

Gail E. Dunlap says she met Jenkins when the women were both “underlings� at Hughes. They served on an affirmative-action committee and quickly bonded. At the time, it was a “man’s company,� Dunlap says. Along with several other women, they started a women’s professional network, and Jenkins also helped to start a black professional network.

“We shared our raising of our children, and the frustrations of what was going on in the company and what could be done to change it,� says Dunlap, who retired as an EKV (Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle) project manager after 25 years with the company. “Daisy was a mover and a shaker.�

In the company, Jenkins found sponsors, such as Dunlap’s partner Richard Siegel, who helped her better navigate the corporate world.

“What you had to do was try and make sure she got the right exposure to the right people in the right light in those days,� says Siegel, who retired as a director working in missile defense after 38 years.

As an African-American woman, Jenkins found herself ignored.

“You’re in a room, and you’re sometimes the only woman in the room, and definitely the only woman of color,� Jenkins says. “These guys were talking, and it’s like I wasn’t there. I was totally invisible and I would make a point and they wouldn’t acknowledge it.�

Moments later, someone would repeat her words and receive accolades: “I questioned, ‘What makes it so much more relevant and smart when he says it, and it’s ignored when I say it?’�

OVERCOMING

The exclusion pained her.

“There have been times when I have gone out to my car and just wept, and then I would always say a prayer and regain my composure and go back in,� she says. “And there’s the confident Daisy coming back and nobody knew what just happened.�

An active member of Rising Star Baptist Church, she calls those her “Jesus breaksâ€� and credits God with the timing of her ascent. Even when success came, she denied several promotions so as not to uproot her two sons. Among other honors, she was named the 2007 ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Woman of the Year.

“Everything I have done, I know I owe it all to God, and I take nothing for granted, and I know that to whom much is given, much is required,� she says. “It’s why I feel compelled to give back and to help others, and I don’t care. My mentees are of all persuasions, orientations, whatever.�

She hopes that someday it won’t matter what her six biracial grandsons look like. Until then, she will keep talking about these issues.

“She doesn’t like to take ‘no’ for an answer,� Fred Jenkins says. “Once she got to the top, she wasn’t happy to be the only black up there. She reached back and pulled others up there as well.�

She is also the vice-chair and soon-to-be chair of United Way of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥. She volunteers with the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Airport Authority, the Human Relations Commission, a ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Unified School District African American task force, the James E. Rogers College of Law Board of Visitors and the UA President’s African American Advisory Council.

In all of it — her book, her career and her life — Jenkins cares about the dignity of the people around her and remembers her roots.

“I’ll be darned if I’m going to mistreat people who are working and doing meaningful work that is very important,� she says. “How dare I talk down to them or make them invisible? No way. To me, that would be making my father invisible or my mother invisible, and that would never happen.�